Inception Ficlets
by MarbleGlove
Summary: This is a collection of short unrelated Inception ficlets. They are almost all Eames/Arthur, and a couple of them are Highlander crossovers.
1. Chapter 1: Don't Touch the Horse

Disclaimer: I don't own the universe or the characters from the movie Inception. I'm just making a bit of fair use of them.

A/N: This was written in response to the prompt: Inception, Arthur/Eames, "Darling, why is there a giant wooden horse in your dream?"

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><p><strong>Don't touch the horse <strong>

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><p>When they want to do a full dress rehearsal with killer projections, they practice in Eames dreams, since he has a proper militarized subconscious.<p>

But when they just want to experiment and are first figuring out some new technique, they often practice in Arthur's dreams because, despite pretty much everyone's expectations, his projections are rather decent sorts who leave them alone to their practice runs without trying to kill them all.

It's weird. Everybody has killer projections. Some are militarized and some are not, but they're all killers. Except for Arthur's.

But there's always been a weird paradox about him, Eames thinks. He looks innately young and innocent with his slender figure and wide eyes. And yet, he also looks incredibly dangerous with his sharp suits and cold glare. And the guns. You can't forget the guns. And he is deadly, except that apparently his subconscious is just as sweet and innocent as his first impression is.

It's weird.

Also weird is, "Darling, why is there always a giant wooden horse in your dreams?"

"Did you want to practice your forging here or psychoanalyze me?"

"I am fully capable of doing both. Come on, a giant wooden horse."

"Just leave the horse alone."

If it had been anyone else, Eames would know better than to mess with a projection. But Arthur's projections weren't dangerous.

So, of course, he went up to inspect the giant wooden horse. It was massive, like the size of a house. Beautifully carved too, with scenes from ancient battles.

"Were you an art major, darling?"

"History major, Eames, which quite clearly you are not. Let me be very logical for you: We are here in my dreams because my projections don't attack, correct?"

"Yes."

"And yet, everyone has killer projections, correct?"

"I've always thought you were a unique little snowflake, dear heart."

"Shut up. If everyone has killer projections but you don't see mine, that *should* tell you that mine are hidden."

Eames finally touched the horse without thinking about it, simply by leaning casually against one of the legs. "Oh come on, darling, we've been everywhere in this dream. Where could they possibly be hidden?"

There was a moment when he thought he heard a creaking noise coming from behind him. It sounded a bit like a wooden door opening.

And that was how Eames discovered that Arthur's subconscious was militarized like a death squad of double-oh spies.


	2. Chapter 2: Everybody Grieves

Disclaimer: I do not own Inception or the music video for Hurt's Wonderful Life.

A/N: This was a response to the prompt: Any fandom, any characters, Hurt's official music video for their song Wonderful Life. (You can look it up on YouTube. This ficlet is a bit peculiar anyway and it's a whole lot more random if you don't know what it's referring to.) ****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

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><p><strong>Everybody<strong> <strong>grieves<strong> <strong>in<strong> <strong>their<strong> <strong>own<strong> <strong>way<strong>********************

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><p>Mal had saved Arthur's life.<p>

He had been young, fresh out of the military, and feeling like his world was over. His world _was_over. And then she had breezed into it, somehow and told him "don't give up, it's a wonderful life." Then she'd proceeded to show him that wonderful life.

She'd taken him around Paris and fed him pastries. She'd taken him to Italy and introduced him to tailors. And she'd taken him into dreams and showed him impossible worlds.

She had saved his life and he hadn't been able to return the favor.

Maybe, though... maybe he'd be able to save her husband and that would be good enough.

But in order to do that, he needed to be able to focus, and he just couldn't. He could feel the drag of depression and grief. Anger and hatred and love and longing and why had she killed herself, and why hadn't she remembered what she had taught him?

"Don't give up. It's a wonderful life."

Her words echoed in his head and he couldn't think.

So he did what he needed to do:

He went to Yusuf and went into dreams, two levels down, and grieved.

He saw Mal everywhere, but always in black mourning, never in color. Not anymore. She danced but never with him. Everywhere he looked, there she was.

She danced and she drowned and she walked away from him and she lay her head on his shoulder. And yet, she still told him, "don't give up. It's a wonderful life."

He had learned that lesson well when she had first taught it to him. And he would never entirely forgive her for forgetting it and leaving him to remember.

But he sang with her and he watched her dancing and he watched her drift away from him.

When he woke up a week later, an hour had passed. He was ready to face the world again.


	3. Chapter 3: His First Totem

Disclaimer: I do not own Inception or any of the characters from it. I'm just having a bit of fair use fun with it it.

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><p><strong>His First Totem<strong>

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><p>Arthur has two totems.<p>

The second is a weighted red die. It's quick and easy to check. Just find a small unobserved place and toss it a couple of times. In dreams, it comes up random.

His first totem he's had all his life.

He'd worn a soft t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants the first time he'd hooked up to a PASIV device. He'd been as comfortable in his body as he could be, to make it easier to focus on the dream. It had made it easier to focus on the dream, but it had also made it obvious to everyone that they were all dreaming.

His teammates teased him a bit but were also impressed. They asked him how he did it, and tried to do it themselves. He didn't tell anyone that it was as natural as breathing.

Instead he started cultivating a well-dressed look. He started wearing suit jackets and waistcoats in reality so that he would have an excuse to wear them in dreams.

That was his second totem. If he wasn't sure if he was dreaming or not, if he couldn't trust the die, he would go into a quite area and remove his jacket, remove his waistcoat and shirt. He would breath deeply and relax his whole body.

When he is in reality, he is disappointed.

When he is dreaming, he has wings.


	4. Chapter 4: Better to Burn Out

Disclaimer: I own neither Inception nor Highlander, I'm just making use of the fair use exemption.

A/N: This was written in response to the prompt:  
>HighlanderInception, Arthur/Eames, one of them is a thousand years old; the other just died

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><p><strong>Better to burn out than fade away<strong>

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><p>Arthur has seen Eames die hundreds of times, if not thousands. He's been shot in the head, shot in the gut, stabbed in the gut, garroted, torn limb from limb by a mob, blown up by grenades, crushed by falling buildings, and, on one notable occasion, eaten by dinosaurs. There have been slow painful deaths and sudden unexpected ones. Some of those deaths Arthur caused, and he didn't regret it once. There have been so many, many deaths and really this is just one more.<p>

He checks his totem again. It still tells him that he's in reality.

He doesn't really need a totem. If he truly begins to wonder if this is reality he can just shoot himself and see if the world he wakes up in is the same one that he's walked for the last thousand years.

When Eames first got diagnosed, Arthur did all the research he could on the current state of the art in medicine.

Then he shot himself in the head. When he woke up he called the hospital again to confirm that the diagnosis was still the same, and he did the research again.

He repeated the experiment five days running before he got sick of it and finally admitted to himself that he wasn't going to wake up from this, no matter how many times he died.

Instead, he emptied out his bank accounts into medical research labs to make the state of the art better. It might help someone some day, but it wouldn't be helping Eames this day.

Eames is dead and he's not coming back and Arthur hates him with just as much passion as he's ever loved him, because Eames left. He had a choice and he still left. Arthur had given him a choice, even if it wasn't the choice Arthur wished he could have given. Eames had known his mother, looked like grandfather, and would never have woken up as an Immortal. But there was the PASIV device. Arthur told Eames, had told him that they could dream share, go in layers deep and have a thousand years together, build a world together, all in a few weeks.

Eames had listened to the offer, had heard all of Arthur's arguments, and had still said "no."

"No, sweetheart. Even you can't bounce back from a thousand years in your own head."

"Not in my head, Eames. In yours! With you! And you know better than to underestimate me."

"Not even you, love. The next time you faced a challenge you'd be dead, and you know it. I don't want to meet up with you in the afterlife because some punk got the jump on my point man."

Arther had growled.

"Come love, my death was always in the cards. Better to burn out, than to fade away."

Arthur had stayed by his bedside for the two weeks it took Eames to die. It didn't look like burning out to him, just fading away. It felt like another thousand years, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5: Until I Die

Disclaimer: I own neither the Inception universe/characters nor the Highlander universe/characters, alas. I'm just having a bit of fun with them.

A/N: This was written in response to the prompt:  
>InceptionHighlander, Eames/Arthur, Arthur is a mortal raised by Methos. Eames is a student of Amanda's who will mourn Arthur for centuries after he dies. (Inception canon compliant if possible, please)

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><p><strong>Until I Die<strong>

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><p>Arthur has killed Eames dozens of times. Sometimes it's a purely practical act to kick him out of a dream, while other times it's a demonstration of annoyance at whatever Eames had been doing.<p>

Pulling pigtails could get both creative and deadly when both participants were in a dream and thus all physical consequences could be avoided. The mental and emotional consequences stayed, though. Sometimes Eames wished that if he just took one more bullet to the brain that maybe he'd wake up in a world where he wasn't so obsessed with Arthur.

Occasionally, he gets the unfortunate feeling that Arthur wishes the same.

But if Arthur truly disliked him, Eames knew that Arthur wouldn't have any problem putting a real bullet in his real brain, intending his real death. Amanda, his teacher in immortality and criminal behavior both, teased him that one day he would fall in love with a delicate little thing who would take him away from his wild ways. Eames thinks of Arthur and laughs. Eames likes the dangerous ones, the ones as sharp and deadly as any blade. For all his mortality, Arthur makes shivers run up Eames' spine more than any Immortal.

That Arthur doesn't know that Eames will wake up from a bullet to the brain outside of dreams as well as inside them, allows Eames to make his advances without fearing a permanent death too much.

Eames doesn't expect Arthur to actually kill him in reality. Which is why he is just as surprised as his captors when Arthur comes to rescue him. Instead of rescuing Eames, he uses a machine gun to kill them all. Presumably he's planning on letting God sort them out, except that Eames knows that Arthur is agnostic.

Eames dies, somewhat in despair, because maybe Arthur truly doesn't mind if Eames dies.

And then he wakes up and Arthur is waiting for him.

"I decided it was easier to simply take you all out than try to extract you individually. I hope it wasn't too painful."

Arthur doesn't actually sound like he would mind if it had been painful. It had been, but Eames can't bring himself to care about that at the moment.

"How did you know that I would wake up?"

Arthur looks annoyed in that way he does whenever Eames questions his competency. Eames thinks he looks adorable like that, but for once Eames isn't simply poking, he's genuinely bemused.

"I'm a point man. It's my job to know."

"Not about that."

"About everything. Come on, make yourself presentable so that we can get out of here." Arthur hands him a travel bag that contains Eames' clean clothes. They are, in fact, _Eames_' clean clothes: shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, all from one of Eames' locked safe houses that he hadn't know that Arthur knew about.

"I think you forgot something."

Arthur smirks, but doesn't respond.

"You do like me!"

Arthur snorts softly and proceeded to ignore him.

"I will love you until I die of old age." Eames tried to keep his tone light, as if he were maybe teasing, as if he weren't deadly serious.

He wasn't sure how well he succeeded when Aurther gave him a hard stare. "You mean until _I_ die of old age. I'm not immortal, Eames, or even a pre-immortal."

"I know." And Eames refuses to think of the pain that knowledge foretells. "But I will love you until _I_ die of old age."

"You're immortal, Eames. Do I need to remind you again? You won't ever die of old age."

"I know."


	6. Chapter 6: Gender Stereotypes

Disclaimer: I continue to not own Inception, but I'm beginning to think, from the way it has gotten into my head, that it might own me. Where's the reciprocity?

A/N: This was written in response to the prompt:  
>Inception, girl!ArthurEames, I never loved nobody fully / always one foot on the ground

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><p><strong>I eat gender stereotypes for breakfast<strong>

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><p>Julie Arthur had been a tom-boy growing up and when she attended her high school prom in a tux, everyone in town had read that as confirmation that she was a lesbian rather than that she disliked dresses.<p>

That had put paid to any potential love life there, but she had been just as happy to not have any ties to that life. She had plans.

She kept her feet on the ground and she was going places and had no time for love and little interest in men who wanted girls.

Once she had left the army (they hadn't known what to do with her either and her dress uniform had involved a skirt), she had found her place as a scarily competent criminal planner. She wore suits.

Despite the fact that she never actually hid her gender, the type of people who hit on her changed from being men who wanted girls to men who wanted boys. It wasn't an improvement.

Eames, though... Eames was different. He was a slob who was more comfortable in a dress than Arthur had ever been. He was a man who could _be_ a woman in a way that most men couldn't or wouldn't.

Most of the others assumed that made him gay. Arthur still kicked herself for making the same assumption when he had flirted with her. She had turned him down sharply and repeatedly.

She had finally been fed up when he had continued to flirt shamelessly while she was trying to work on a job. She had sat back, and told him directly that "I would have expected someone in your position, Mr. Eames, to correctly identify the gender of your target."

He had looked surprised. "Darling Arthur, what makes you think I haven't?"

"But. You." It had been a long time since something had truly thrown her like that simple question.

"You like wearing suits, and dislike dresses - except when they are painted onto one of my own voluptuous bodies - and I desperately want to do all sorts of athletic things with your body that require neither."

"Hmm." Arthur had contemplated this new piece of information. She liked to analyze new information and figure out the implications before making any decisions.

"We work in dreams, darling, we eat gender stereotypes for breakfast. But sex is still a whole lot of fun."

She didn't think she had ever had sex with someone who knew who and what she was.

"Very well, my hotel room, after dinner. But not during work hours." She had turned back to her work, but not before seeing Eames grin.

She hid her own in her papers.


End file.
